A million dollar house is not a lot of money. Most of the guys in my fraternity have a house at least that much in value. Look, if these people don't want to have debt then they just need to get a job.

I spent a whole summer washing cars at my Dad's dealership to pay for school and I made plenty. When I graduate next year, I'll have the sales manager job at the dealership waiting for me. I've earned it.

Lawnchair:Tatsuma: .... a million dollar house is a pretty regular (or even small-ish) house in most of the country, Subby. And a family of four living on a $200,000 is not any means rich.

In the world of facts, a million dollar house is in the top 2.3% of home values in the nation. The median owner-occupied home value is $186,200.

Tatsuma:No, those are houses that are worth more than a million dollar. If you take houses between 500,000 and 999,999, then that's 10% of the country, or the vast majority of people who have houses in decent neighborhoods in New York, Chicago, LA, or any other major city out there.

Come on Tats, just admit you made a gross overstatement about how commonplace a $1 million house is in the USA. Please, pretty please? You'd get a lot of brownie points if you nibbled just a bit on some crow. I think crow is kosher, too.

what_now:No they won't. I don't have time for this shiat today, because my actual students have sent me actual FAFSAs to review and I've been out of the country for a week, but take it from me: I've been doing this for a decade.

FEDERAL AID DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY.

I am sorry; you have actual real-world expertise and knowledge in this field. You do not belong here.

Your comments will be ignored, or random Farkers will contradict you with no references or sporadic references to unreliable sources.

Here is a link to the artist's blog. Turns out he had no idea what the copy was going to say. They just gave him an outline for different representative groups of people.

"As usual with these assignments, I'm given a bare outline of what is needed (ie: single mom with two kids, retired couple, etc) and little, if any of the actual copy that will accompany them... and when I eventually saw the article, my jaw dropped at the salaries assigned to each of these people. They obviously didn't base them on illustrator's salaries. "

Rapmaster2000:A million dollar house is not a lot of money. Most of the guys in my fraternity have a house at least that much in value. Look, if these people don't want to have debt then they just need to get a job.

I spent a whole summer washing cars at my Dad's dealership to pay for school and I made plenty. When I graduate next year, I'll have the sales manager job at the dealership waiting for me. I've earned it.

Izunbacol:Bumblefark: Izunbacol: In San Antonio, you meet husband and wife high school teachers with 2200 sq. foot houses complaining about running out of space. Heck, I had a conversation with a waitress at a brew-pub whose husband is a waiter - they were buying their first house. There's no great barrier to home ownership here, as long as you have good credit and stable income.

Quite true. Wife and I bought our first home down here just about 6 months ago. Picked up a well-kept, 2700 sq ft in the northwest (read: good schools, nice neighborhoods) for about 125k.

Giggled like a schoolgirl signing the papers for it.

This place is a well-kept secret. All the west-coasters know that Austin is the "Safe" city in Texas. They don't know what this place has to offer! Cheaper than Austin, great art and culture scene, loads of amazing (and not terribly expensive) restaurants, craft beers, and the place basically exists to drift from one big festival with flowing beer and chalupas and tamales and live music to the next!

Indeed. And as long as you can make peace with the summer heat, and the fact that you will at some point die in a fiery, multi-car pileup on the 410 loop...there's really not much of a downside.

inclemency:thurstonxhowell: In other words, low-income families are routinely being asked to fork over more than half of their annual income for the privilege of sending their child off to campus for a year.

They wouldn't be asked that if they looked at affordable state or community colleges instead of over-priced private schools.

So the poor should stay poor.

God bless america.

/douche//not capitilized for a reason

I went to a state school for undergrad. I wasn't poor when I made that decision and I'm not poor now. Expensive private schools are, for the most part, status symbols for people with more money than sense. Especially for undergrad. If the name on your diploma is really going to matter to you and your career, you're probably looking at grad school, anyway. Go somewhere cheap, but respectable, for undergrad and go get that fancy degree later. All that money you didn't spend on undergrad will help a good bit in keeping you on that road.

/ Perhaps, if you had attended a university of the quality that my state provides, you would know that you misspelled capitalized.// I know, I know, you were very excited to call me a douche. It's an exciting world full of exciting opportunities.

Bumblefark:Izunbacol: In San Antonio, you meet husband and wife high school teachers with 2200 sq. foot houses complaining about running out of space. Heck, I had a conversation with a waitress at a brew-pub whose husband is a waiter - they were buying their first house. There's no great barrier to home ownership here, as long as you have good credit and stable income.

Quite true. Wife and I bought our first home down here just about 6 months ago. Picked up a well-kept, 2700 sq ft in the northwest (read: good schools, nice neighborhoods) for about 125k.

Giggled like a schoolgirl signing the papers for it.

This place is a well-kept secret. All the west-coasters know that Austin is the "Safe" city in Texas. They don't know what this place has to offer! Cheaper than Austin, great art and culture scene, loads of amazing (and not terribly expensive) restaurants, craft beers, and the place basically exists to drift from one big festival with flowing beer and chalupas and tamales and live music to the next!

DubyaHater:Earn $50K a year and have $200K in savings? No one in this planet is that good with money. My girlfriend heard someone call into the Dave Ramsey show who earned $8,000 a month, married with one kid, who had over $42,000 in credit card debt alone. Plus the wife, who earned her own income, had credit card debt of her own. Most people are idiots when it comes to budgeting.

So because you and your girlfriend heard about an idiot no one can have that much in savings with that income?

bmwericus:It's true that we have a wide disparity in home prices. And the inflation in some markets is huge - we bought our first house in '91, it's worth oh, 3 x what we paid and more than a million bucks most likely - as noted, how our kids will afford that kind of morgage is beyond me. No mansion, BTW, Two bed, two bath, one car garage, small lot....

Yet you go to what some laughingly call flyover country and a family house of 3/4 bedrooms can be under 150K, sometimes well under.

Where I live now, starter homes are in the "Low 100's" but top of the line is around $25 million or so.

There must be some reasonable balance between income and debt that would make it fair to both sides - if fairness is what we seek. I paid full ride for college, no loans or grants, have no idea how to game the system.

I just bought a 4 bed/3 bath home on a huge corner lot for $103K. I put $23K down, so my mortgage is laughably low, and taxes are under $3K per year. I'm currently earning a salary of around $80K.

The only bad part about all of this is that I live in the panhandle of Nebraska.

BMFPitt:So clearly the solution is to loan both kids $100k+ for their sociology degrees at 0.75%, then forgive that debt after a few years at their McJob.

// Poe's Law is making it real hard to even be sarcastic about that kind of shiat anymore.

The best way to fix the student loan problem, IMHO, is to make student loans equivalent to any other unsecured loan (something that can be discharged in bankruptcy). Also, get the government out of the student aid (loan or grant) business, except for cases like the military where its a form of compensation for employment.

By putting all the burden (and default risk!) on the private sector, loan rates would rise dramatically -- the (nearly) free money would dry up -- and colleges would be forced to adjust tuition to compensate or face a sudden and dramatic drop in enrollment. It would probably force them to get creative: drop lots of luxuries like free gyms for students (etc.), trim programs that are unpopular, extract more money from sports, seek more funding through research grants, etc. -- and probably shrink somewhat. ...but if it ended up making tuition more accessible without life-long crippling debt, that would all be worthwhile.

Nutsac_Jim:dustygrimp: Tatsuma: .... a million dollar house is a pretty regular (or even small-ish) house in most of the country, Subby. And a family of four living on a $200,000 is not any means rich.

derrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp

Not derpp. In my area, if you are a single dude making 100k, you are just getting by. If you have a family and all the extra expenses invilved, which probably means the wife works and you have to pay someone to watch your kids,.. 200 is ok. Certainly not rich and swimming in a bathtub of coins like Uncle Scrooge.

If you live in Houston, you are doing well. But then, you have to live in Houston.

You live in a very, very small enclave of the country. I gross right around $80k/year ($60k salary + ~$20k end of year bonus). I live in a one-bedroom apartment that costs me roughly $1000/month all-in after utilities (cable, heat, electric). I own two cars ... one is a paid off 1997 Civic, the other is a 2004 Audi S4 that I pay ~$350/month for. Add in insurance for the two cars at another $130ish/month.

I paid off my student loan, I have no credit card debt, and I max out my HSA contribution ($270/month) and put away $800/month into my 401k.

Food for my SO and I roughly runs $300/month, put away a few hundred in the liquid savings account and that basically sums up my monthly liabilities.

$3150 is what I've calculated my monthly liabilities at for the two of us. I bring home ~$3800 a month after taxes (excluding the end of year bonus which goes right to savings/investments), which gives me $800/month to do whatever I want ... Every month.

Tatsuma:jshine: I have to second Tatsuma's post though -- Mrs. jshine & I are over $200k/yr and we're not rich. We've got one car (a Mazda 3), an apartment, and a dog. We're certainly not starving, but neither are we wealthy.

change 'most of the country' to 'most big cities in the country' and $1,000,000 to '$500,000 to $1,000,000' and my post is accurate.

This is also pretty much what I meant to begin with, should have been more accurate.

$200,000 a year for a family is barely middle-class unless you live in the middle of nowhere.

Um, no. I live in NYC and went to HS in one of America's wealthiest suburbs.. $200k is absolutely upper middle class. Hubby and I make a bit over $160k together and I certainly consider myself upper middle class - I can purchase a home while still saving money for my kid's college and my retirement. Now, can I afford a 3bd/2 ba in the Upper East Side? No. But I live very well in "normal" middle class Queens.

Ivo Shandor:Goodluckfox: Define "most"??? I think you meant "in certain markets, a "normal" house runs about a million dollars."

For example in Vancouver, BC a million dollars gets you this. A half million might get you something about the same size, between two auto body shops and across the train tracks from a rendering plant.

chevydeuce:And a person with a Hispanic last name will get twice as much financial aid as one with a "white" sounding name, even though the Hispanic family makes nearly three times as much as the non-Hispanic one...

/why yes, I do have personal experience with this, why do you ask

If it makes you feel any better, once I got to school I was pretty lonely.

I paid for a public college education by working - it took six years - I graduated with no debt. All these cry babies complaining about student loans can suck it. I'm not alone. I know a lot of people that ate beans and lived one grade above homeless to achieve the same. The govt is just perpetuating poverty in the poor by indebting them thru college.

Ivo Shandor:For example in Vancouver, BC a million dollars gets you this. A half million might get you something about the same size, between two auto body shops and across the train tracks from a rendering plant.

For a million dollars you'd think they could proofread the ad. At least I'm not pali of a Strata.

Antimatter:I'm still bitter about having my aid be tied to my parents income, despite them not actually paying for my tuition. I actually lost all aid my sr year because they sold a failed business and made money on the books, despite all that money going to medical bills.

This! When I went to school in early 2000 they said I would get almost no aide because my parents would be paying for most of my school which is not the case. You are a dependant student for way too long, almost had my parents orphan me so I could be labeled independant.

The headline can't be based on Federal Aide unless the student is over 25 years old.

Tatsuma:Lawnchair: In the world of facts, a million dollar house is in the top 2.3% of home values in the nation. The median owner-occupied home value is $186,200.

No, those are houses that are worth more than a million dollar. If you take houses between 500,000 and 999,999, then that's 10% of the country, or the vast majority of people who have houses in decent neighborhoods in New York, Chicago, LA, or any other major city out there.

Do a search of www.har.com for Houston (just for giggles).

Because the tax structure is so different here (no state taxes, just property and sales taxes), prices are no where near what they are in New York, Chicago, or LA. Same goes for any city in Texas including Dallas and Austin.

In the grocery a few days back, I just met a new retired couple who moved here from New York. They kept going on about how nice people were here, and how cheap housing, food, etc. was. You'll have to remember, that even though Texas votes Republican, most of the large cities are primarily Democrat, so they fit in nicely.

I'm originally from Louisiana, and I think people in Houston are jerks, and the cost of living and housing is expensive, even though I live in the "best" part of Houston (so YMMV).

A million dollar home in Houston and a moderate income gets you a lot more than you'd get in New York, Chicago, or LA (don't get me wrong, as a consultant, I loved Chicago when I was there for a year). But comparing on house value alone isn't a fair comparison.

Whenever you look to the night sky and wonder why so many people give you shiat when all you're doing is telling the truth, I want you to know that you type shiat like this all. The goddamn. Time. It really, really hurts your credibility across the board.

Tatsuma:.... a million dollar house is a pretty regular (or even small-ish) house in most of the country, Subby. And a family of four living on a $200,000 is not any means rich.

Define "most"??? I think you meant "in certain markets, a "normal" house runs about a million dollars."

In *most* of the country, a million bucks gets you an estate, ranch, acreage, palace, mansion, or some combination of the above. In a few places (big cities, certain enclaves) it gets you a 3/2 w/ 2car garage and a back yard.

I am the poster child for this in a way, though over the last few years our income has done very nicely. My son is a very good student, Eagle Scout, etc., and can't get anything but loans because of our net worth. We live relatively simply. A nice vaca every summer but nothing over the top, two cars long since paid for and honestly a little old, house debt retired years ago by accelerating payments. Other families we know who have not saved but have a big house and big mortgage and go on extravagant vacations and buy expensive cars have done a lot better in getting scholarships. Is it unfair? Possibly, but I would not trade situations. I have not worried much about my kids' education because i have saved for it. As a family, we don't want for much. I have been blessed, and have made my choices and our lifestyle fits us just fine. And if scholarships dry up, I won't have to worry about my kids getting a good education.

Earn $50K a year and have $200K in savings? No one in this planet is that good with money. My girlfriend heard someone call into the Dave Ramsey show who earned $8,000 a month, married with one kid, who had over $42,000 in credit card debt alone. Plus the wife, who earned her own income, had credit card debt of her own. Most people are idiots when it comes to budgeting.

No they won't. I don't have time for this shiat today, because my actual students have sent me actual FAFSAs to review and I've been out of the country for a week, but take it from me: I've been doing this for a decade.